BWX Technologies said Monday it had received a $3.6 million contract for engineering to decommission and refurbish parts of its Lynchburg, Va., facility to eventually produce high-assay low-enriched uranium fuel for a National Nuclear Security Administration nonproliferation program.
The uranium-molybdenum alloy fuel the company will produce will be used in U.S. research reactors that currently burn high-enriched uranium, according to a BWXT press release.
The effort is part of the research reactor conversion program within the National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA) Office of Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation.
Fuel production could begin by 2024, BWXT said, “[a]ssuming additional future awards.”
The company is a longtime provider of fuel for research and test reactors. It currently is the sole supplier in North America of fuel-bearing parts for reactors used by national laboratories and academic institutions.
In 2019, the Navy awarded BWX Technologies a contract worth up to $806 million over seven years to procure materials for reactor components for Virginia-class attack submarines, Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines, and Ford-class aircraft carriers. That is in addition to some $2 billion in reactor components and fuel work the company hauled in from the service earlier last year.
